USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea : with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement, Volume II > Part 44
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Mr. Dustin is the inventor of the special solid top which is now so much in vogue in California, and several hundred orders for solid tops, seat covers, painting, etc., have been turned out from this plant.
C. C. C. TATUM, a prominent Los Angeles realtor, with offices in the Merchants National Bank Building, is one of the highly successful business men of the city. He was probably born with some of his talent of salesmanship, has had it developed and refined by an experience beginning in boyhood, and in addition has achieved the thorough under- standing and knowledge that is at the foundation of a successful career in real estate. Mr. Tatum has been a resident of Southern California over twenty years.
He was born at St. Louis, Missouri, October 22, 1879, a son of Joseph Tabor and Adele (Lynch) Tatum, his mother still living in Los Angeles. His parents were both born in St. Louis, his father in 1837. They were married in that city October 25, 1866, and Joseph T. Tatum died in Los Angeles January 8, 1916. Had he lived nine months longer he would have celebrated their fiftieth or golden wedding anniversary.
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Joseph T. Tatum was a lawyer by profession, and practiced in St. Louis more than forty years. He was a graduate of Yale College with the class of 1859. When he attended the fiftieth anniversary class reunion in 1909 there were only seventeen survivors out of a large class. Soon after leaving Yale he entered the Civil war, serving in Merrill's Horse, a regiment of Missouri cavalry. During the latter part of the war he was judge advocate of the New Orleans District. Joseph T. Tatum and wife and family came to Los Angeles from St. Louis in 1897. Though he was admitted to the California bar, he never engaged in active prac- tice on account of growing deafness. The widowed mother was the daughter of Henry C. and Victoria Charleville Lynch. The Charleville family were pioneers of St. Louis, Missouri. Mrs. Tatum received her early education in Sacred Heart Convent at St. Louis. She became the mother of nine children, eight sons and one daughter. Three of the sons are deceased. Those living are all residents of California, though their homes are widely scattered.
C. C. C. Tatum, the seventh in age among the children, was edu- cated in the public schools of St. Louis. Even while a schoolboy on Saturdays and during vacations he worked as cash boy with the cloth- ing house of Browning, King & Company. Then from 1895 to 1897 he was a clerk in that establishment, and in November, 1897, he came to Los Angeles. For about a year he was a clerk with Sanborn, Vail & Company at Los Angeles, and held some other positions. In April, 1899, he became real estate salesman for Edward D. Silent & Company, and during the next three years acquired a vast amount of knowledge of local real estate. In 1902 he engaged in business for himself, form- ing a partnership with Sam and Paul Schenck under the name Schenck, Tatum & Schenck. Then in 1904 he withdrew, and continued business alone until 1908, when he became a partner in the Tatum-Winstanley Company, but in recent years has been again operating under his in- dividual name, a name widely known and recognized in and around Los Angeles. Mr. Tatum is in a general real estate business, handling orange groves, city property, subdivisions and practically anything and everything connected with real estate. He has done a good deal of sub- dividing in and around Los Angeles.
At different times Mr. Tatum has taken an active interest in politics as a matter of encouraging good government and good men to office, without any ambition of his own. His partisan affiliation is as a repub- lican. He is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and is a member of the Los Angeles Realty Board, one of the vice-presidents of the California State Realty Federa- tion, was a director three years and first vice-president one term of the Los Angeles Realty Board, and is a member of the National Associa- tion of Real Estate Boards, the members of which, in accordance with a recent resolution, are entitled to use the term "Realtor" in designat- ing their business.
Mr. Tatum married Miss Blanche LeDoux, daughter of Dr. J. A. and Alice (Nadeau) LeDoux of Los Angeles. Mrs. Tatum was born in Montreal, Canada, and when an infant was brought to Los Angeles, where she was educated in the local schools and the Girls' Collegiate School. She is a member of the Ebell Club. Dr. LeDoux is one of the leading physicians and surgeons of Los Angeles, having followed his profession in this city for more than thirty years.
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JAMES ANDREW MONTGOMERY is dean of the jewelry merchants of southern California, president of the firm Montgomery Brothers., occupying one of the largest, most costly and most beautiful retail jewelry stores in the United. States and carrying one of the largest and finest stocks in the country. The business, esablished in 1881, is a conspicu- ous feature of the retail district, and many of its patrons in past years have been people whose home is in the most distant part of this country and foreign lands.
The handsome store at Broadway and Fourth Street is an interest- ing and dignified monument to the sound business sense, intelligent and persevering energies of James Andrew Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery is a living illustration of the power and resources of an individual char- acter. He was born at Brantford, Ontario, Canada, August 29, 1850, secured a grammar school education in his native town, and had no spe- cial advantages that any other young man properly ambitious and dili- gent could not acquire. He has been in the jewelry business as an artisan and merchant since 1870, beginning in Canada. He started for the great west in 1880, spending six months in Nevada, which was then a wild and woolly section of the west, and its social conditions and business status were hardly suited to Mr. Montgomery's nature and training. He sought to return to Canada, but eventually was led by destiny to Los Angeles, where he arrived February 22, 1881. He had only three dol- lars and a half on reaching this city. The population of Los Angeles was then eleven thousand people, and he has seen the community develop to comprehend more than half a million people and assume vast and varied forms of metropolitan life. He began repairing watches. Wisely he determined not to become an employe but to set up a modest shop of his own, and in that shop he laid the development of the present great business. There followed years of hard work, and a thorough knowledge of what he was about, a cheerful and pleasing personality, brought results. Thirty-eight years have greatly changed his position and has given him far more than his brightest ambitions anticipated. While working at the bench and largely for the trade he gradually acquired a stock and developed a general jewelry business. In those days he knew discour- agement and even hunger. At that time jewelers in the west paid more attention to watch and clock work and repairing than the sale of gen- eral stock. Business methods were not systematized, and owners scarcely knew what departments were profitable and what not.
In 1888 Mr. Montgomery's brother George A. Montgomery came to Los Angeles and in a short time the firm Montgomery Brothers was organized. Later the business was incorporated. Today, though almost seventy years of age, James A. Montgomery is as active and as busy in the work of managing his business interests as at any period in the past. He puts in eight hours a day six days a week, and he is an unusual type of business man who is not worn out by his business but finds strength constantly renewed by energetic contact with it. He enjoys the respect and esteem of the entire business community, has accumulated a hand- some competency represented by investments in real estate, stocks and bonds, and owns a beautiful home on Bonnie Brae, located in the fash- ionable Wilshire district.
Socially inclined, a member of various organizations, his serious hours have been taken up by his business and financial interests and he has never held any office of public trust, though keenly and deeply inter- ested in all things that have made Los Angeles a great city. He is a republican. He was an honorary member of Los Angeles Commandery
James. a. Montgomery.
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of the Knights Templar, with which he has been affiliated more than thirty-three years, has been a member of the Penthalpha Lodge since 1886, a member of the Royal Arch Chapter since the same year, is a past grand in the Odd Fellows and a past chancellor in the Knights of Pythias, a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and for more than ten years was a trustee and treasurer of Immanuel Presbyterian church at Los Angeles.
March 4, 1888, at Los Angeles, Mr. Montgomery married Annie T. Tierney, of Philadelphia.
WILLIAM K. MURPHY, general agent for Southern California of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, is a man with a record in the insurance field, and ever since he left college fifteen years ago has been identified with the present company, one of the oldest and most substantial in America. It was his qualifications and record as a business getter and builder that brought him to Southern California, where he has supervision of a large force, contributing to the volume of business which in 1919 caused California to rank twelfth among the various states in which the Northwestern Company does business.
Mr. Murphy was born at Madison, Wisconsin, November 7, 1880, a son of Daniel E. and Rosalie G. (Maher) Murphy. When he was five weeks old his parents removed to Milwaukee, and he grew up and spent his early life in that city. In 1899, after completing his nigh school course, he entered the University of Wisconsin and received his A. B. degree in 1903. Soon afterward he was put on the roll of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company's solicitors, and has always stood high among the individuals getting business for that com- pany. In January, 1916, he was appointed general agent for Southern California, with headquarters in Los Angeles. Under his immediate supervision are sixty people in his territory.
The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee is now in its sixty-second year. It was organized in 1857 at Janesville, Wisconsin, and it is therefore one of the oldest companies in America. It was first known as the Mutual Life Insurance Company of Wisconsin, but when the offices were removed to Milwaukee, in 1859, the present corporate title was adopted. The character of its management has re- mained practically the same throughout the sixty odd years of its exist- ence, conservative, substantial and progressive, and the assets have grown from nothing to over four hundred and thirty-two million dollars. Much of the progress was made under the late Judge Henry L. Palmer, who was president of the company from 1874 to 1907, when he became chairman of the Board of Trustees and continued in that position until his death, in May, 1909. George C. Markham was president from 1907 to January, 1919, when he resigned, and was succeeded by William D. VanDyke. The company has always confined itself to the United States both in its policies and its investments. In 1859, when the company moved to Milwaukee, it had only a hundred thirty-seven policies in force, and in 1918 the number of policies was over six hundred thousand.
Mr. Murphy is a member of the California Club, Los Angeles Ath- letic Club, University Club, Los Angeles Country Club, Chamber of Commerce and the Knights of Columbus. At Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, June 30, 1909, he married Vivian Lamoreaux. They have six children : Gertrude H., Helen L., Daniel E., William J. Jr., Barbara and June. The four older children attend the Gardner School in Los Angeles.
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FRANK L. MUHLEMAN, senior member of Muhleman & Crump, lawyers, has a well-earned position of esteem in the bar of Southern California, and is a man of varied experience and capabilities in other lines than his profession.
He was born on a farm in Monroe county, Ohio, November 14, 1869, a son of Jacob J. and Louise ( Hoffmeyer) Muhleman. Like many American boys, he had great ambitions and not much opportunity to fulfill them. He had a district school education as a boy. While living at Newport, Kentucky, he read law in the office of Colonel John S. Ducker. In 1892 he entered Baldwin-Wallace College at Berea, near Cleveland, Ohio, and remained a student there until 1893. He also studied under a private tutor during the following year.
Mr. Muhleman first came to California in 1894, and for the next three years was engaged on a ranch with his brother, R. G. Muhleman, near Sacramento. He had not yet satisfied his deep-seated desire to qualify as a lawyer. Returning to Newport, Kentucky, he again took up the study of law, taking a course in the McDonald Institute, where after three years he was graduated with the LL. B. degree. He first practiced law at Newport, and while there made a campaign for the office of city attorney. In 1903 he removed his home and professional business to Parkersburg, West Virginia, but on 1905 disposed of his practice in the East and came to Los Angeles. The first five years he was in Los Angeles he was attorney for the Title Insurance Company, and he still has offices in the Title Insurance Building. He then resigned his position with that company to form his partnership with Guy Rich- ards Crump under the name Muhleman & Crump. They have a general practice and are recognized experts in title law.
Mr. Muhleman resides at Glendale. In 1910 he was city attorney of Glendale, and in 1916 was elected trustee of Glendale, and is still an official member of the municipal government there, being now chairman of the Board of Trustees. He served as a member of Draft Board No. 7 for Los Angeles county. August 3, 1912, at Los Angeles, he married Florence Wright. They have two children: Ruth Louise, born in 1914, and Frank L., Jr., born in 1918.
FRANK THORNTON PRICE is president and general manager of Nel- son & Price, Incorporated, 223 West Eleventh Street, Los Angeles. That statement alone is perhaps sufficient to identify him with the most successful business men of Southern California. It might be added further that Mr. Price is a young man, and at the age of thirty years is head of a business which sells more automobile tires than any other firm west of Chicago. He does both a wholesale and retail business, handling all makes of tires, and specializes in the distribution of the Kelly-Springfield, Hartford and Michelin tires. As an evidence of what his organization is capable of doing it might be mentioned that Mr. Price made a contract with the United States Rubber Company for a million dollars worth of automobile tires for 1920. This is the largest single contract that corporation ever made with a tire jobber. Nelson & Price have retail stores both in Los Angeles and Pasadena, and also do a business with many other smaller firms. They maintain a sales force covering the whole state of California, and the pay roll runs close to a hundred thousand dollars a year.
In getting to his present position Frank Thornton Price has capi- talized only the resources and abilities of his individual character. He went to work when a youth as a farm hand and has made and recognized
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his own opportunities and gone steadily ahead toward the goal of success.
He was born at Phoenix, Arizona, October 2, 1889, son of George and Nellie E. (Christy) Price, the former a shoe manufacturer of Boston, Massachusetts, and the latter a resident of Los Angeles. He has an older sister, Mrs. L. D. Mosher, of Santa Barbara, California.
Mr. Price was two years old when brought to California and he grew up in San Bernardino, attending public school there to the age of sixteen. He then went to work as a farm hand, and at nineteen made his first acquaintance with the business he is in today. He went to work for the Diamond Rubber Company of Los Angeles, and was with that con- cern five years, acquiring and assimilating a great amount of technical and commercial knowledge. He was promoted to assistant manager under Mr. F. O. Nelson of the Rubber Company, and in 1913 they asso- ciated themselves in a business of their own handling automobile tires. Later they built the present home of Nelson & Price at West 11th and Olive streets. In 1918 Mr. Price took over the entire business, Mr. Nelson retiring, though his name is still retained in the business title. Mr. Price incorporated the business in March, 1917. The home of this firm is a two-story building with twenty-seven thousand square feet of floor space and basement.
Mr. Price is also a director of the Caltex Oil Company of Texas and is owner of the Locust Stock Farm. This farm, though in the nature of a hobby and diversion from his main business, is an enterprise of magnitude. The farm contains eight hundred six acres and is located near Bakersfield, California. On it he raises horses, cattle and Poland China hogs. Mr. Price is affiliated with all the Masonic bodies of Los Angeles, including the Shrine and the Consistory. He is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, Los Angeles Country Club, Automobile Club of Southern California, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Advertising Club, Press Club, Merchants and Manufacturers Association, and the First Methodist Episcopal Church.
He and his family reside at 835 Fifth Avenue. March 4, 1914, at Los Angeles, he married Miss Clair K. Johnston, who was born in San Antonio, Texas, and finished her education in a girls' school at Hollins, Virginia. They have two daughters, Patricia and Frances.
ROBERT J. POWELL has been a factor in Los Angeles business circles in oil, real estate and other lines for a number of years, and has a most successful business record as a stirring and enterprising citizen.
He was born in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, June 9, 1878, a son of Jerome and Amanda E. (Horton) Powell. His father, who died in 1896, was a native of Warren, Pennsylvania, was well educated, and organized and edited for a number of years the Ridgeway Advocate at Ridgeway, Pennsylvania. In later years he was a lumberman, mer- chant and real estate man.
Robert J. Powell was educated in the grammar and high schools of Ridgeway, and at the age of fourteen entered Bucknell University at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and finished his course there in 1900. He supplemented this literary education with a course in Eastman's Busi- ness College at Poughkeepsie, New York, where he graduated in 1901.
Mr. Powell for a number of years was associated with his brother, E. C. Powell, under the name E. C. and R. J. Powell of Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, handling real estate and as lumber dealers. He was also a director in the Elk County National Bank.
On coming to Los Angeles, in 1910, Mr. Powell became interested
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in the Engineers Oil Company, in which he became a director, but has since disposed of his interests. Probably his chief contribution to Los Angeles business was his part in establishing the Alfred Pure Ice Cream Company. Back in his home town at Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, he knew that C. J. Alfred was manufacturing a quality of ice cream unexcelled on every possible count, and that Mr. Alfred was a past master of the business. In order to give Los Angeles a similar establishment, Mr. Powell returned to Ridgeway in 1913 and induced Mr. Alfred to bring his experience and enterprise to a city of unequalled opportunities. Thus was established the Alfred Pure Ice Cream Company, of which Mr. Powell has since been secretary and treasurer.
Mr. Powell is a past master of Elk Lodge No. 379, A. F. and A. M., at Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, is a York Rite Mason, is a member of the Los Angeles Country Club and a member of the Presbyterian Church. At Ridgeway, Pennsylvania, February 19, 1906, he married Miss Mabel R. Williams.
GEORGE ARTHUR MONTGOMERY. The active business career of George Arthur Montgomery in Los Angeles is comprehended in the history of Montgomery Brothers, the great jewelry house on Broadway, one of the finest establishments of the kind on the Pacific Coast. This business was founded by his brother, James A. Montgomery, in 1881, and for about thirty years George Montgomery was an active member and partner, but is now retired.
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Mr. Montgomery was born at Brantford, Ontario, Canada, Novem- ber 4, 1857, and acquired his education in the public schools of his birthplace. He had some business experience in Canada and in 1887 came to Los Angeles. In February, 1888, he became associated with his brother as an equal partner in the firm of Montgomery Brothers, and from that time forward gave the best energies and abilities of his mature years and experience to building up the interests of the firm. Ill health compelled his retirement from the business at a recent date, and he is now living in ease and comfort with a handsome competence won by his energy and ability.
Mr. Montgomery is an ardent republican, interested in public affairs, but never an aspirant for public office. He is one of the charter members and founders of the Jonathan Club, and one of the oldest active members of that notable social organization of Los Angeles.
Mr. Montgomery married in Canada in 1883 Alice Richardson. Her father, Robert Richardson, of Port Rowan, Canada, was formerly a member of the Provincial Parliament for South Norfolk, Ontario. Mr. Montgomery has three sons: Chester A. and Monro D., both mem- bers of the Montgomery Brothers corporation, and Richard W., a civil engineer connected with the California Standard Oil Company.
FRANK SABICHI. By birth and family connection Frank Sabichi belonged to the old order of southern California. In his youth he was educated abroad and had the finest advantages of English and European institutions, and as petty officer on an English war vessel had visited nearly every port and clime of the civilized world before he had attained years of manhood. He returned to Los Angeles fitted by talents and training for a big and important place in the new destiny that awaited that city. For a third of a century he remained one of the eminently constructive factors in the progress and development of Los Angeles and much of the surrounding territory. A lawyer by profession, he is best
Frank Dabichi
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remembered as a business man and an administrator of great and im- portant property trusts.
He was born in the Mexican town of Los Angeles, October 4, 1842, and his earliest memories were of the old Pueblo community, and from a child he associated with many of the great hearted and hospitable people who comprised the early population of the town. His father was Mathias Sabichi, a native of Austria, who came from Vienna and settled in southern California in 1838. Mathias Sabichi married a mem- ber of an old family from the Mexican capital. In 1850 Mathias Sabichi, desiring to afford his sons Frank and Mathias, Jr., the advantages of a liberal education, started with them for England. While crossing the Isthmus of Panama he was stricken with yellow fever, and died before reaching England. The boys were taken charge of by the American Consul, Joseph Rodney Crosky, who received them into his own family and became their foster father. Under his supervision their education was generously provided for. Frank Sabichi afterward was entered as a student in the Royal Naval Academy at Gosport near Portsmouth, and spent several years diligently pursuing the liberal and technical courses then in vogue. On leaving the Academy he was commissioned a petty officer in the English Navy, and for several years cruised the water of Europe and many seas. He gained a large and varied knowledge of the diverse peoples of the world, languages, arts and institutions, and also participated with the spirit of youth in the adventures that were a part of his duty. He was a participant in the Sepoy Indian rebellion, and several times while on the Pacific visited the Philippine Islands.
Eventually, having satisfied himself with travel and feeling that his training should be diverted to avenues of greater usefulness, he returned to his old home in southern California and arrived in Los Angeles in the summer of 1860. Having determined to study law, he entered the office of Glassell, Smith & Patton, at that time one of the leading firms of southern California. He qualified for the bar, and with the advantage of a liberal culture and also a knowledge of the language, institutions and people of southern California he rapidly advanced in his professional career. Eventually his extensive business engagements demanded that he abandon his general practice and for many years he was engaged in managing his property and promoting the industrial and commercial development of his home city and section. He was interested in several land syndicates and projected railroad systems. He acquired much valu- able real estate in and about Los Angeles. He was a director in the San Jose Land Company, which controlled a large part of the property now in the heart of the orange belt. He was one of the promoters of the Los Angeles and Ballona Railroad, and for a time was vice president of the company. He was especially interested in the development of the old family homestead of twenty acres on East Seventh street, and was largely instrumental in the establishment of that important thorough- fare of Los Angeles. He took a deeply interested but always unselfish part in politics and public affairs in his native city. His was the per- sonality that lends itself easily to leadership in men and affairs, and again and again he was the point of initiation for many important move- ments. He did not desire public office, its cares and responsibilities, but from a sense of duty consented to become a member of the City Council in 1871 and was re-elected in 1874. During his second term he was presi- dent of the Council. In 1884 he again reluctantly consented to become a candidate in order that his judgment and ability might be drawn upon in the negotiations whereby the city acquired the water rights upon
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